It makes no sense to structure oversight so the Gaming Board doesn’t review matters as crucial as the choice of a company to operate a casino until after the city’s casino authority already has made its decision. At every other casino, the Gaming Board isn’t just a rubber stamp; its regulators walk the walk with the casino developer from the get-go.

The language doesn’t make the Gaming Board a “rubber stamp.” It gives the Board power to veto any operator chosen. That’s just a complete misrepresentation of the facts.

It reminds us of Senate legislation that House Speaker Michael Madigan recently amended to create a much better pension reform bill.

Speaker Madigan, take this rigged casino bill away from sponsors who plainly won’t write an expansion plan without weakened enforcement at Chicago-owned casinos. Maybe a Madigan casino plan, like the Madigan pension plan, would be a vast improvement on the Senate’s proposal.

Madigan is not involved with gaming negotiations because he has a conflict of interest. So, if he ignored his conflict of interest and interjected himself into the gaming bill talks, the Tribune’s reporters would likely write a series of stories about Madigan’s conflicts and the Tribune editorial board would denounce Madigan for being a walking conflict of interest.

Why does the Tribune believe itself to be the self-appointed expert on just about everything? Who appointed them? I kinda thought it was the papers’ job to REPORT news. So little of that going on. They are like whiny children, begging to get it to go their way. So declasse

IF the Tribbies were something other than a national best practices model for shoddy journalism they might remember about 5 years ago when Madigan worked on a gaming bill with Billboards. It was designed to allow for limited expansion but block Blagoof from shaking everyone down.
The Tribbies ENDORSED the measure.
It used to be called institutional memory

I look at Chicago having an authority to oversee the casino license the same as Harrah’s having a board of directors. The board makes decisions for Harrah’s such as picking a contractor, hiring,etc.but the Gaming Board has the authority to shoot those decisions down. Somebody at the Chicago level needs to make these decisions and the Gaming Board will have the same authority to shoot theirs downs.

{Madigan is not involved with gaming negotiations because he has a conflict of interest.}

Unless I am hallucinating; a possibility not to be under-estimated, I believe I read somewhere (I believe possibly here) not too long ago, that the Speaker’s (appearance of; or ) conflict no longer existed.

Maybe @SteveBrown can make a cameo appearance and clarify that.

I am not advocating the Speaker’s involvement in gaming, actually if he were accepting my advice I would caution against it. I’m just pointing out that I think the conflict may no longer exist.

I’m actually wondering if the Tribune Ed. Bd. just really wanted to stick it good to state Rep. Lou Lang, since he just lambasted them in his letter the other day, and since he’s had SO much involvement with this Casino expansion issue over recent years–just to try and make him look bad.